Decomposition of disk and jet optical emission: Case of PKS~1510-089 and PKS~0736+017
Measuring BLR size and black hole mass of jetted quasars with strong radio emission is challenging due to the contribution from non-thermal synchrotron radiation from the jet in the optical continuum. Here, we investigate the optical continuum emission in two flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), PKS~0736+017 and PKS~1510-089, by separating the thermal emission from the accretion disk and the non-thermal synchrotron emission from the jet using their distinct polarization signatures. Our analysis combines multi-epoch optical spectro-photometric and polarimetric observations from the archival optical continuum, H$β$ emission line light curves from earlier reverberation mapping campaigns, and 37 GHz radio data. For PKS~0736+017, we find that the disk contributes approximately 70 % ($f_d = 0.70^{+0.01}_{-0.01}$) of the total optical emission. After removing the jet component, we obtain a revised H$β$ lag of $84.8^{+23.2}_{-18.4}$ days. In contrast, the disk contribution in PKS~1510-089 is lower with 37.5 % ($f_d = 0.37^{+0.01}_{-0.01}$), with a corresponding H$β$ lag of $54.4^{+4.4}_{-5.4}$ days. Our findings highlight the need for careful decomposition of optical light curves in jet-dominated AGN.
Authors
- Suvendu Rakshit (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8377-9667)
- Shivangi Pandey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4684-3404)
- Ayush Gupta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2583-9223)
- Adarsh Kumar
- Merja Tornikoski
- Anne Lähteenmäki
Publication Details
- Journal
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Published
- 2026-11-02
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2611.03006
- Primary Topic
- Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
- Type
- preprint